The blessing of the LA Visitor Center

Hola Familia Y los padres que esten en Peru!!!!
  Como estan todos??? Well we officially had zone conference this week and man is President Haynie a good mission president. We all went back to the basics and learned how to better use the book of mormon in our teaching as well as how to work along side the members. Something that President Haynie said that I really like is that, "The faintest ink is better than the best memory." He really encourages us to record our feelings thoughts and impressions when we are in Zone Conference or teaching or whatever it is. Because you never know when you may need that small thing that you learned or you may need to remember something important. Anyways we got to meet a lot of the new missionaries in L.A. and one of the coolest things is that they have something called an International zone where all the missionaries who are speaking a language other than English Or Spanish go. So now we have farcie, korean, mandarin, japanese, russian, ASL, and I think there's a couple more but thats all I can remember as of right now.
   This week though we were also assigned to speak in sacrament meeting. Its kinda weird but up until this point I had only born my testimony and never had the opportunity to speak. So my first time speaking and I think that it went pretty well. We were assigned to speak for 15 minutes and I spoke for around 20 but my topic was inspired from Zone Conference and how we all put huge emphasis on member missionary work. As I was thinking about it though this applies to everyone in the church in every part of the world. We as members enjoy the comforting assurance that we know that Christs true church has been restored to the earth once again and we can live together forever as families even after death. So when we've tasted of how sweet the gospel really is we need to share it with others as well. They don't know just how sweet the gospel is because they've never tasted it before. But if we as members could give them just a small sample they will want to learn more and more. So I challenge everyone everywhere to post something on their facebook or instagram or snapchat or share a card about jesus christ tell them why we do the things that we do and tell them why we have so much happiness and joy. The lord promises us that he will help us in this journey as we strive to share the gospel and we will find that opportunities will be put in our paths.
  Another cool experience this week is we were able to take our recent convert Manuel Villagomez to the temple visitors center. And let me tell you this was my first time going to the visitors center and it was incredible!!! The videos and teaching tools that they use are amazing. Probably my favorite part of the whole trip was being able to walk around the temple and just taste of the spirit thats around the temple. It truly is one of the best feelings in the world. Well long story short because of the Visitors Center he was able to find his family history and is now ready to take names and do baptisms for the dead. I am so grateful for the opportunities that this new mission has given me, and I'm especially grateful for the temples that we have today and all of the work that we are allowed to do for those who are dead and didn't get that chance in this life to accept or hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
  Well I love you all I hope that Mom and dad have a good time in Peru, and I hope that Grandma and Grandpa and the kids have fun as well. Les quiero mucho espero que todos tengan un semana buena. Que dios les bendiga!!!!
 Elder Gibbons 

 

Facebook Post

Andrew Gibbons
July 29 at 2:35 PM ·

Los templos son una bendición bien grandote. Los templos nos da la oportunidad a vivir con nuestros familias para siempre aún después de la muerte. Por favor mándame un mensaje si tú quieres aprender más de como puedes tener una familia eterna por favor mándame un mensaje a través de el Facebook Messenger o deja un comentario abajo.😁😁 Que dios les bendigas!!!!

Importance of Baptism

Hola Familia y Amigos
  Calidad cousin Jazlynn!!! I'm so excited for your decision to be baptised!!! Out here I'm trying to help people do the same the thing that you did but you did it when you were really young so you can enjoy of those blessings your whole life. These people out here didn't know how to get those blessings and so Im trying to show them the way that they can do that. I'm super happy for you, you will feel the blessings of this in not only your life but in your families life as well. But satan is still going to try and tempt you so you have to remember to keep praying and going to church because thats the way that we can get help from our father in heaven. I love you Jazlynn I hope that it was a super spiritual experience.
   This week has been pretty good for Elder Losee and I. We are focusing a lot on the members in our ward and helping to clear out all the people who have moved out and all the new members who have moved in. It's a work in progress but we are doing our best to clean up the list. Unfortunately almost all of the lessons we had set this week fell through so a pretty slow week as far as teaching goes. We almost had a temple visitors center trip set up with Crystal and Antonio but they canceled as well. So as far as lessons go this week it was pretty slow. But we were able to do a little bit more knocking which helped us find a couple more people than we did last week. We were able to find this one lady name Yisera who was amazed that two rubios que son altos podrian hablar en Espanol. We started teaching her the restoration and it turns out that she already had a BOM but had not been able to read it. We told her what the book was and she was so excited to read about our Savior coming to this side of the world to establish his gospel and church.
   Well something cool that will be happening in about a week or two is that we are going to be singing in a Spanish fireside on august 5th up at the visitors center. So today we have to go to a rehearsal at 4 o'clock with all the other missionaries that are singing at the fireside as well. Hopefully it turns out good. Anyways a funny story from this past week is last night me and Elder Losee were walking to our next appointment and we saw this guy with a broom stick he was swinging it around and then he saw us and came running up to us. I was like ready to whip out some Karate kid crane pose on this guy because I thought he was coming to hit us. Anyways he didn't hit us but he was mumbling and then out of nowhere he just asks elder Losee for one of the pamphlets that we had. He gave him the pamphlet and then the guy turned towards a car saw his reflection in the window and said thank you sir god bless you and then he ran away. So you just never know what your going to meet on the streets.
   Tell Nathan Felizidades y que espero que ha aprendido mucho y que reciba muchas bendiciones de su servicio. I love you all so much thanks for all the birthday letters and packages again. Hope you all have a good week!!! Les amo mucho. 
Elder Gibbons

Facebook Post

Andrew Gibbons
July 22 at 2:51 PM

Nuestro Salvador nos ama y él quiere que todos puedan vivir con él y nuestro padre celestial para siempre. Por medio de su evangelio que nos ayuda superar cualquier desafío. Nunca nos deja solo!!😁
Si usted quiere aprender sobre el evangelio de Jesucristo por favor mándame un mensaje por medio de Facebook Messenger y yo y mi compañero podemos enseñarle. Que dios les bendigas!!! 😁😁

Facebook to El Salvador

Hola Familia!!!
   Como estan ustedes? aqui estamos bien, no mas trabajando diligentamente en la vina del senor. This week has been a quick one for me and Elder Losee. Most of our lessons fell through and we had a couple of rough days but we had a few things happened that were definitely worth the rough days. So It all started on my birthday, we were doing weekly planning when elder losee looks at his phone and hes getting a call from Chuna Mejia. Chuna Mejia was the Goldmine investigator that we were teaching but then suddenly had to go back to El Salvador to get some legal work done. Well we had somewhat maintained contact with him through Facebook messenger but we had never gotten the opportunity to call him. So we open the call and turns out it was a facetime call through messenger we got to see our investigator in El Salvador teach him a lesson and end with a prayer with him being thousands of miles away from us. It was one of the coolest experiences that I have had with technology and he gave us the good news that he will be back by the end of July!!! We are so excited for him and better yet he told us that he had recieved an answer about the Book of Mormon and said that it was true!! So we will wait for him to come back and then we should be able to baptize him really quickly.
  My birthday was pretty fun we went to wing stop for lunch and did weekly planning at Coldstone. But I've noticed that you really stop caring about yourself on your mission and you really start caring more about your investigators and their progression😀😀😀. Thank you all so much for the amazing birthday letters emails and packages I really appreciate them. Hope that everyone had An amazing week I love you all so much. Les quiero mucho. Espero que todo este bien.
Elder Gibbons

Facebook Post - Nuestro Salvador

Andrew Gibbons
July 15 ·

Él es nuestro Salvador y Hermano amoroso. Con Él todo es posible, podemos superar cualquier tipo de adiccion, desafío, o debilidad. Siempre está allí esperandoles pero primeramente tenemos que buscarle. Por favor mándame un mensaje si tú quieres aprender más. 😁 Que Dios les bendigas!!!

Giving Everyone a Chance

Hola Familia
 This week has been good for me and elder Losee. We did an exchange with the other elders in our district, elders Hammond and Stratford. We set a bunch of new baptismal dates this week!!! One of the coolest investigators we have is named Angel. Hes a 17 year old kid and loved the message of the restoration. He said it just feels right. He came to church and loved it.

Something that I've come to know is that it's really easy to tell people who are interested and have intent and people who aren't. When you share the message of the restoration you can tell who is touched by the spirit and who isn't. But our job is to give everyone a fair chance.

Sorry I didn't have a lot of time we did a lot of things today. Hope everyone is doing well les quiero mucho.
Elder Gibbons

Belle's Baptism
Soccer Zone
Temple pictures (the group pictures is my CCM district)

Facebook Post - Baptism

Andrew Gibbons
July 8 ·

El bautismo es algo bien importante a dios. Él es nuestro amoroso padre celestial y somos sus hijos. Como algún papá Dios nos quiere que regresamos al presencia de él. Un paso bien importante en ésta senda es el bautismo. Si somos bautizados por la autoridad de dios y después recibimos el don del espíritu santo y preseverarnos hasta el fin vamos a volver y vivir con nuestro padre que está en los cielos. (Por favor comparten este con los demás para que puedan entender la importancia del bautismo😀) (please share this with others so they can see the importance of baptism😀)
Si quieren aprender más pueden mandarme un mensaje por medio Facebook messenger.
If you would like to learn more you can send me a message through Facebook messenger. Que dios les bendigas!!!

Embracing Change

Hola Familia!!!! Como están?
  Esta semana fue bien difícil por nosotros. Durante el tiempo de la Copa Mundial es casi imposible a encontrar las personas a ensenar. Pero lo que paso es que en Jueves cambiabamos nuestro presidente de misión. Se llama Presidente Haynie y el es un hombre bien inteligente.  President Haynie is from Seattle Washington and served his mission in Japan. He's way smart and an amazing mission president (even though Ive only met him like 2 times😁 I can already tell.) So funny story about our first interview with president Haynie when we met him literally one of the first things he told us was that in order to do missionary work more effectively we have to work with the members and strengthen the ward. He said this is way more satisfying than knocking doors for 2 hours and you will be able to get real baptisms instead of just doing it for a baptismal statistic. As soon as he said that I knew that our entire aspect of missionary work was going to change. So some of the coolest things about this mission is that it has been a mission since the mid 1800's, we now have the LA temple visitors center in our mission, which president says is necessary that we utilize. In fact its so necessary that he told us that we have to keep track of it as a Key Indicator. He says that when investigators can just get a taste of how strong the spirit is outside the temple they will want to get more of it, therefore helping us as missionaries accomplish our goal of getting investigators to the temple. We are changing our focus from finding to strengthening the ward, he says that instead of sharing just a simple spiritual thought with members we have to train them on how to share the gospel, so we are going to start doing role plays with them as well. One of the things that I'm most excited for is that President Haynie wants us to do at least 2-4 hours of service a week, President Henrie didn't want us doing service because we focused a lot on finding opportunities so just this week we were able to help an Hermana in the ward move (not gonna lie doing service again felt really good.)
Elder Losee and I are really excited for this opportunity me and him both feel that this is a big change but a good one. We think that with all these new resources we are going to see some major increases in effectiveness and in how we are going to do missionary work. this week for me and Elder Losee was pretty slow. our finding was rough due to the Copa Mundial but we still ended up getting 3 investigators to church. The Familia Romero was two of the three that we got to church their son Jovani was just recently baptized but the mom and dad haven't been baptized yet they're just waiting on legal papers before they get married but they are an amazing family and have such a strong faith in Jesus Christ and the restoration. Im always super humbled by what these people have gone through and how they still have a belief in Jesus Christ and God, if anyone has an excuse to not come to church its these people but yet they still do it and sacrifice in order to come and partake of the sacrament. The other Investigator that came to church is named Bernie he has a solid testimony and knows that the book of mormon is true he just needs to be married and then he says that his goal is to make it to the temple to be sealed as soon as possible. So with him right now we are helping him plan out a wedding (And holy crap there is a lot of things to plan for one!!!!) But if he follows through and gets married he should be baptized on the 21st. But other than that It was a pretty slow week for us. Still adjusting to new way of doing missionary but we are super excited to try it out. One of the things I think of grown the most use to is change because you do it a lot as a missionary and you learn to just embrace it.
I'm happy that everyone is doing good and that buddy has taken to Carson that will help him a lot. Todo esta bien aqui viva Mexico por la Copa Mundial. (Aunque se perdio hoy). Yo se que este evangelio es verdadero y que ora vez tenemos la misma iglesia que jesucristo establecio. Todos debemos assistirlo si somos miembros o no. les qiuero mucho que dios le bendigas!!!!
 Elder Gibbons